Effect of Learning Environment on Child Arithmetic Skills

Effect of Learning Environment on claw Arithmetic SkillsAbstractThe main aim of this prove is to find place whether education environments give affect squirtrens arithmetic skills. The hypothesis is pip-squeakren in kindergarten bequeath performed let out in arithmetic skills than children receiving home-schooling (N=40). These 40 children will be categorize into 2 multitudes, Boys and Girls and according to their erudition environments, they argon sub-grouped into kindergarten and home instruction environments. Two various arithmetic tasks were carried step forward to assess the children skills. The experiment lasted for 12 weeks and at the end of the last week, all the scores were tabulated for the groups. A factorial between design was apply in this experiment The statistical depth psychology yielded support for the hypothesis that children who education in kindergarten score smash than children who discover at home. However, due to lack of generalisation to p opulation, farther replication of the deliberate is recommended with adequate sample size.How Learning Environments Affect Children Arithmetic SkillsAcquiring elementary literacy skills bring approximately a significant change to the advances in look for and educational practices. The preschooler historic period argon viewed as the point whereby those kids atomic number 18 at their crucial point to learn the grassroots abilities of breeding in how to read and write. So at that place is a dilemma for p atomic number 18nts whether they should send their child to kindergarten or they should go along with homeschooling.Children fly the coop to learn numbers numbering before langu days acquisition and bollock education (Lipton Spelke, 2003 Xu, Spelke, Goddard, 2005). As the child progress, his numerical accuracy gradually refined throughout his childhood until he gained more insightful knowledge in by and by year. (Halberda Feigenson, 2008). Subsequently, with langu era ac quisition, children will understand the numbers in words and break them in little groups (Wynn, 1996), that atomic number 18 within their counting range and gradually move h integrityst(prenominal) of the range to know more numbers (Lipton Spelke, 2006).Talking about cognitive instruction in children, Jean Piaget (1896) had devoted all his life to study how children think and not to just what children know. Piaget believes that children are able to seek ground of the world through the offshoot of assimilation and accommodation. Therefore, Piaget placed great emphasise on cognitive outgrowth associated with the experience and not social interaction. some early(a) perspective of cognitive discipline is a Russian psychologist LevVygosky(1896). Vygosky focused on culture and society when it comes to cognitive learning readiness. He believed that children learn other(a) than when they are learning independent as compared to learning under the way of a more capable partner. This is what he called zone of proximal development. In conclusion, Vygosky believed that cognitive development is affected by social interaction as compared to be independent. The difference in how Piaget and Vygotskys approaches to children cognitive development are the belief of individualistic and social processes.On a explore study by Rea and Reys (1970), before children start to enrol in formal education, they are equipped with little of numeric understanding .Children from early age is constantly practicing their counting skill. Geary (2004)stated that childrens counting abilities could be seen as a confederacy of inherent constraints and inductions based on counting experiencesSeo and Ginsburg (2004) studied the types of unceremonial numerical activities which four- and five-year-old children express in natural settings during free gambol. Children demonstrated five numeric categories classification activities, magnitude activities, enumeration activities, dynamics a nd pattern and shape activities. harmonize to Sarama and Clements (2009), children construct mathematics notions as they get actively engaged in the following sorts of play sensorimotor or manipulative play, symbolic positive play, symbolic dramatic play and games with rules. Children getting involved in play use it as a means to get them in caper solving situations to develop their thinking on mathematical ideas and procedures.Informal mathematical knowledge undergoes considerable development during thepreschool years and provides a basis for the later acquisition of formal mathematics in the school context (Clements and Sarama 2007). In this sense, successful early childhood instruction builds on childrens informal knowledge and supports the linkage of this prior thinking to more analytical mathematical representations, eon taking into account diversity in terms of language, culture, ineluctably and interests. Children possess informal knowledge of many complex mathematical i deas, revel the challenges of playing with these complex ideas and, with adult or peer guidance, they can get hold of greater understanding than previously expected (Ginsburg, Greenes and Balfanz 2003).It was hypothesized in this study that children who pay for education in kindergarten performed better in their arithmetic skills as to children who are receiving their education at home. Another hypothesis in this study is that boys in both school and home will score higher than girls in home and school environment in the assessment tribulation.MethodsParticipantsThere will be a total of 40 toddlers involve in this experiment and they are staying at the same community area. They will be change integrity into 10 male and 10 female toddlers will mention the designated kindergarten while the remaining toddlers will be receiving home schooling at their feature respective homes.The age of the toddler will be 5 years old for both genders to ensure fairness of their learning capabil ity. The two assorted teaching environments that are set for this experiment will be at a kindergarten or at the toddlers homesMaterialsMath ability task. Math ability was measured using the Early Number Concepts component of the British capacity Scales II (Elliot et al., 1996). This math test comprises 24 items that assess various basic numerical competencies through four items (Recognizing numbers names and numerals, identifying quantitative relationships and coordinated correspondingNumber estimation task Three number lines were used 0 10, 0 20 and 0 100. Each line was 25-cm long, with 0 on the left end and 10, 20, or 100 on the right end, depending on the scale.ProcedureThe 20 children will be divided into 2 groups according to their genders and in each group, they will be further split in another two groups, based on their learning environments kindergarten or home schooling.The children were instructed to follow the instructions in accordance to each task. The children are shown pictures and they were told to use pencil to circle the correct answer in the precondition questions. Next, they were told to match the same shapes from a group of mixed shapes of all sizes. Lastly, they were given up simple basic addition and subtraction problems to solve and verbally role out the answer. The total scores for the worksheet will be 20 marks.ResultsA factorial between groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to investigate the effects of gender and learning environments on childrens arithmetic skills. Shapiro-Wilk and Levenes test were used to evaluate the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance respectively. Neither was violated. Levenes statistics for the test of equality is non-significant with F (3, 36) = .679, p=.571.The results for ANOVA was statically significant with children who dish out kindergarten performed better than children who did not attend kindergarten with F (1, 36) = 8.112, p=.001, 2= .184, as well as statistically sig nificant main effect for practice, F( 1, 36) = 1.073, p=.307, 2= .029.However, there is no significant interaction indicated that the effect of unlike learning environments on childrens arithmetic skills are associated with gender differences, F(1,36)= 1.00,p=0.01. The personality of the interaction is shown in Figure 1.DiscussionThis study aims to find out whether 5-year old children who attend kindergarten tend to deal better arithmetic skills than children who have home schooling. This is a double blind experiment whereby both experimenter and children are unaware of what are there being tested, this is to protect the experiment from having the observer-expectancy effect. It was hypothesized that children who attend kindergarten tend to have higher scores than those children who have home schooling, and it was support by the data using two-way analysis of variances (ANOVA). The data showed that there is a significant difference of the scores between the two learning environment s.The two approaches that Piaget and Vygotsky had come across with are closely associated with the type of learning environments which children learn their cognitive skills in both kindergarten and home schooling. Children who attend kindergarten tend to be following Vygotskys concept of zone of proximal development whereby children are able to learn under an adults superintendence while children who receive educations at home from their parents, the home-schoolers are moving towards Piagets teaching as the children depend on themselves to gain knowledge about what is happening around them.As the child progresses from infants, his/her ability to learn in any case progresses along with the growth. Infants demonstrated word segmentation ability when adults were talking to them. When they clutch the preschool age, environment play a significant role in their learning ability. At this age group, they are prone to pick up invigorated-fashioned information quickly even though it is a n adult conversation (Whitehurst Valdez-Menchaca, 1988). So, the new information that the child had picked up, if the learning environment and the caregivers reinforces them to gain a better understanding of the things around them, the child will be more move on in learning new skills.Therefore, in order for child to stick good arithmetic skills, they can be exposed to more numbers-related information and problems and a positive reinforcement learning environment to gain better understanding of arithmetic problems.However, despite the fact children at the early outpouring toddlers age they are constantly using their arithmetic skills during their playtime with other children such as counting the numbers in their group and dividing themselves up for their games, but parents are always looking for educational videos to stimulate those childrens intellectual development at home(McCormick, 1998),which indeed raises the childrens academic attainment but it lowers their expectancies of success and pride in accomplishments in their future (Deborah.,et,al., 1995).Studies are consistent with the hypothesis that children tend to gain better cognitive development in kindergarten as children are exposed to active interaction conservations, feedbacks and department of corrections are given to them so they are able to understand the concept better to avoid future mistakes.There are some limitations in this experiment. First limitations is generalization of the population, the sample size of this children was taken at one community area and the conclusions are based on the responses of those pre-schoolers children that have only to have better understanding of the world. Therefore it does not generate nice data to prove that this experiment is reliable. This greatly reduces the external validity of this experiment. due south limitation is the history effect whereby some children are enrolled in other arithmetic classes that could possibly allow them to score higher th an the others and eventually kick in them to become outliers in the groups. This is one of the confound variable which this experiment had failed to control. Therefore, further studies are pauperismed to eliminate this variable and including a control group will eliminate this confound.In conclusion, there are some improvements that need to make for this experiment to have better reliability and usefulness to the population. Researchers who are curious about how children acquire higher level of arithmetic abilities or cognitive development should conduct more studies and analyse how different age groups solve problems or question with increasing difficulty under different learning environments, what are some of the tools that they use to assist them in the process of learning, and last of all, the interaction between gender and learning environment should be further analyse and require further research.